Jenny Lorenz, Executive Vice President, Linn Area Credit Union | Back to TopJenny Lorenz has been with Linn Area Credit Union in Cedar Rapids for more than 22 years and has served in a management capacity throughout her career.

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Lorenz has served on the board of the Cedar Valley Chapter of Credit Unions in various positions, including president, and serves as the chapter's legislative representative.She is currently the president of the Iowa Credit Union Foundation and president of the Iowa Council of Credit Union Executives Society.Lorenz earned her baccalaureate degree from Upper Iowa University in 1983 and earned her CCUE designation in 1996.

Jenny Lorenz is IT director at the Linn Area Credit Union in Cedar Rapids, IA, and a Seagate Technology EVault customer whose IT shop is just outside a 10 square-mile radius that was flooded following severe June rainstorms.
One of her locations lost power for a few days and an ATM machine was submerged in the floodwaters.
For Lorenz, the benefits of sending her data far away to a dry location are pretty obvious.
In addition, her industry requirements were met without heavy lifting from her strained IT staff.
"Seagate's EVault is SAS 70 certified," which is an independent verification that the company has a stable control environment, and "that was a selling point," she says.
Before negotiating her SLAs, Lorenz determined which volumes on a particular server made sense to back up and those that didn't.
"They charge by the gig and we didn't want to back up everything over and over again," she says.
When testing the product, Lorenz found she could schedule backups throughout the day so she didn't have to tax her Internet connection during peak hours.
With Seagate EVault, she gets 24/7 monitoring and notification, a standard offering among most SaaS vendors; however, EVault doesn't offer user trouble-ticket integration, according to the recent Gartner report.
In comparison, EMC's Mozy allows tickets to be created through 24/7 customer service, while IBM's Arsenal can integrate with a customer's trouble-ticket systems.

Perhaps what draws users to a remote SaaS firm is the built-in DR that comes with the service.
During the flooding in downtown Cedar Rapids, Lorenz was running her EVault product through a routine annual restore test.
"It went well," she says.
"We've been able to restore backups remotely, use browser technology transmissions of direct deposits and access the data we need.
The credit union's servers are 10 miles away from the flood zone and a nuclear facility is also 10 miles away.
Says Lorenz: "Theoretically, we could go anywhere in the country if we needed to get away from a disaster, and I could manage the data."

Cedar Rapids, Iowa-Linn Area Credit Union is pleased to announce that Executive Vice President Jenny Lorenz was a recipient of the 2010 Governor's Volunteer Award for her involvement and leadership with the Iowa Credit Union Foundation (ICUF) Board of Directors.
The Governor's Volunteer Awards (GVA) program was created in 1982 to recognize volunteers for their commitment, service, and time.
The criteria for the award includes:
Demonstrating exceptional commitment to volunteerism by helping with a special project or ongoing activities
Demonstrated exemplary leadership, creativity, cooperation and hard work in their service to others
Made an outstanding contribution to state or community through volunteer service
Lorenz has served as a volunteer board of director for ICUF for more than 10 years, and currently serves as the President."Jenny has been committed to helping advance and improve the Iowa Credit Union Foundation," said Marybeth Foster, Executive Director of ICUF.